The critics' darling Mary Jane returns, and as a reader, I couldn't be happier. McKeever did good work on the spy action of Mystique, but his best work has always been on teen drama, and Mary Jane has probably been his best work at Marvel in my opinion. This is the first issue of a new miniseries, but it picks right up from where the last series left off, including picking up on subplots that were left dangling when that series was unceremoniously cancelled. It's still pretty accessible, although those who remember the Mary Jane/Flash kiss will be a bit more clued in as to what Liz is peeved about, and it's still a lot of fun, although I confess that I'm not sure why Marvel would be expecting better sales this time around using the same tired comic book format instead of just going straight to digest where the book seems more likely to succeed.
The trick with a story surrounding Mary Jane is that she's basically a supporting player, and one who doesn't even know the secret of the book she's supporting, that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. So it's actually more than a little impressive that McKeever has taken this character and tweaked her just enough to make her a likable, strong female protagonist rather than a foil or weakness for Spider-Man. Giving her a crush on Spider-Man leads to some very funny moments, and playing her up as a sweet, gentle teenager instead of a swinging '60s party girl is an important tweak to making her work in this context as well. This isn't the Mary Jane I grew up with, nor is it really the one we see in modern comics, but it's close enough to be recognizable, and it's an interpretation interesting enough to carry her own series.
Another important aspect of Mary Jane as a series is that it takes place in a superhero world, but the conflicts that face our heroine aren't generally superheroic. This isn't "how Mary Jane helps Spider-Man overcome the Green Goblin," it's what happens in Mary Jane's life while Spider-Man is off dealing with that stuff. Her conflicts are more traditional teen soap opera subplots like the boyfriend who wants her to help cheat or the pissed-off girlfriend or even the all-important question hinted at in the title of the series of who's going to take her to homecoming. In the grander scope of Spider-Man tales, these questions and stories are inconsequential, but when they play out in Mary Jane, the reader is drawn into MJ's world and sees the importance that these stories have for her.
Of course, a big part of what makes Mary Jane so enjoyable for me has nothing to do with the stories, but instead relates to the work being done here by Miyazawa. Miyazawa is on my favorite artists list, but it's not because he's ideal for everything... it's because when you put him on the right book, you can't imagine anyone else doing it, and that's definitely the case with Mary Jane. The sweet nature of Mary Jane comes to life in no small measure because of Miyazawa's design for her, and I quite enjoy the amount of emotion he gets to play across the faces of MJ, Peter, Liz and Harry. McKeever's script is accessible and clear, but a lot of the emotional undercurrents of the story, whether it's Peter's anger at Harry or Liz's resentment of MJ, come through in Miyazawa's art.
Mary Jane: Homecoming is a commercial nightmare for Marvel, a comic book aimed at a young girls market that really only exists to read manga, at least at this point. Fortunately, while the book might struggle commercially, it's been a great success on the creative front since day one, and this miniseries is enjoyable not just for its target audience (which it seems bound to miss in this format) but for those who just enjoy well-crafted character driven stories with great artwork. 8/10
